Consistency and Savings with Siemens Braumat Compact

Yazoo Brewing finds
consistency and savings with
the Siemens Braumat Compact
Craft breweries are quickly
learning that the Siemens
Braumat Compact system can
have a measurable, positive
impact on their operations.
Regional brewers who are
looking to get a handle on costs,
or microbreweries looking for
the consistency and efficiencies
that can help them reach their
growth targets, find that the
Braumat Compact offers
multiple ways to meet their
needs, freeing them from
repetitive process details to
focus on beer quality.
Any craft brewer that may think
they are too small to benefit
from this kind of automation
package or to afford it, should
consider the following scenario.
You have a successful beer
business. Your local sales are
solid and growing. The beer has
Internet buzz that is ringing the
phones off the hooks; they want
your beer everywhere, it seems.
You have got a solid production
team and the support and
backing of clear-headed owners.
Things should be great.
But your brewers are spending
too much of their time manually
checking single-loop controllers
on your fermenters. Your tank
space is maxed out and you
need a new building, but that is
not in the budget for another
two years. Your glycol chiller is
running hard – maybe too hard
– and your tanks are not chilling
as fast as they used to. The beer
in those tanks needs to be at the
right temperature at the right
time, because the yeast will not
wait, and you are starting to
worry about consistency.
Materials costs continue to rise,
energy costs are volatile, and
you need every point of
margin you can get.
Process Automation Systems
Answers for industry.

Linus Hall, founder/brewer at Yazoo Brewing in Nashville, found
himself in that situation recently. “We’d outgrown our facility,”
he said. “We couldn’t fit in any more tanks. I anticipated that
we’d have to invest in a bigger chiller. We have some established
brewers coming into our market, and if we don’t keep up our
quality, our sales would drop off.”
Faced with this situation, Hall talked to Siemens representative
John Walker about the Siemens Braumat Compact system –
which is based on Simatic PCS 7. “I thought it would be a while
before we’d be big enough to use the system,” Hall said. Faced
with the full capabilities of a product designed to handle the
world’s largest breweries – and based on a system capable of
controlling entire chemical plants – Hall’s reaction was a natural
one.
But the keyword in the system’s name is Compact. The Braumat
Compact is that big brewery package, but scaled and optimized
to run small to medium-sized breweries. It can be used to control
the processes in one area or several, and it will grow right along
with you, delivering big brewery process efficiencies all the way
up to 200,000 barrels a year.
Walker showed Hall how the scalability of Braumat Compact
made it possible to use it now for Yazoo’s pressing needs in
fermenter temperature control. In the near future, that same
scalability will make it easy to integrate all the process control
aspects of Yazoo’s planned expansion: grain handling, mashing
and lautering cycles, filtration, carbonation and cleaning-in-place
(CIP).
“When we build our new brewhouse,” Hall confirmed, “we’re
going to use the system to control the brewing processes:
mashing-in times, mash temperatures, and so on. We’ll just add
the probes, automated valves, and such. That will be even easier
than retro-fitting Yazoo’s fermentation cellar.”
Smooth fermentation
For now, though, Yazoo is using the Braumat Compact to run its
fermentation program. The need was clear enough. “Our
temperature controls were on individual tanks,” Hall said. “We
had 20 tanks that we had to manually keep up. We drew up a
schedule each day and had someone go to each tank and hold
temperatures, ramp them up or down. One guy would spend half
a day every day monitoring those tanks; not all the time, of
course, but the responsibility.”

The time this consumed was bad enough
when it worked perfectly, but it that was not
always the case. Single-loop controllers are
relatively cheap, but they are only as good as
the consistent, constant actions of the
brewer monitoring them by eye. “We’d have
beers that were not down to filtering
temperature by the time we wanted to filter,”
Hall said. “Or maybe a tank was missed,
overlooked for cooling and stayed at
fermentation temperature for two weeks.”
Braumat Compact changed all that. “We can
see what’s going on in every tank from one
central operator interface,” Hall said, and
that is just the beginning. The Braumat
Compact enables the user to create and store
a digital collection – a library – of easily
customized profiles of brews. It knows the
fermentation regimen for each one of
Yazoo’s beers and controls the temperatures
on each tank over time to ensure consistent
beer.
Additionally, the pH measurements, and
specific gravity changes on every individual
batch can be recorded and easily accessed as
Excel-compatible files for quick inspection.
That is not installed at Yazoo – yet – but the
functionality is available and easily added.
“We put in a profile for temperature control,
say, for our wheat beer,” Hall explained. “We
can have different profiles for each beer, one
for the hefeweizen, one for the pale ale and
so on. The system is user-configurable. We
can make changes to the temperature
profiles ourselves and easily create new
profiles – it’s easy to use.”
“Once we put the profile in the library,” he
continued, “we just choose which one we
want and hit the start button. Then we don’t
have to check it or change it or monitor it for
two weeks. The profile controls at what rate
the temperature rises. Before, we had
someone checking temperatures every hour,
but now the temperatures are being checked
constantly.” If the temperature curves depart
from the profile, alarms go off to prompt an
eyeball check.
A temperature profile can be set for the hotwash
CIP, too. Hall recalled that a brewer
forgot to turn off the manually-operated
coolant flow to a tank after it was emptied of
beer. As the hot solution entered the tank,
the glycol flow was pulling down the
temperature, putting stress on the chiller and

decreasing the effectiveness of the wash. Now the Braumat
profile will automatically shut down coolant flow when the tank
is emptied, and monitor the temperature of the CIP program.
Constant checking and constant glycol flow adjustment means
smoother temperature curves that meet end-points on time.
Batches that hit the right temperature at the right time mean
more consistent beers and more efficient use of limited,
expensive tank-space. When beer is always ready on time, always
chilled to the proper temperature for filtering when it is time,
more batches can be put through the same number of tanks in
a year’s time.
“Our time in tank is much more consistent now,” Hall said. “We
haven’t had lags, we haven’t had to leave beer in the tank for a
longer time because of errors or inconsistent temperature
curves. In the past we’d average one of those once a month,
so we save significant time on 12 to 15 batches a year.”
Hall has not added the capability the Braumat has to track
specific gravity. “It’s capable of it, but right now we’re doing that
manually,” he said. Even so, being able to check and control the
temperature profiles constantly has meant more consistency on
fermentation times. Hall checks gravity once on the fifth day of
fermentation, and says it’s typically done at the right time; if not,
he can adjust the profile, give it a boost and get it finished.
Brewing to that tight a schedule largely under the system’s
control will automatically – pun intended – bring up the issue of
craftsmanship. If the Braumat Compact is repeating the process
identically every time, is the beer still “crafted”
Hall does not see that as a problem. “If you’re taking the
variability out of what you’re doing,” he said, “I don’t think it
takes the craft out of it. There have been enough variables in
barley, hops and water in the past few years. If you can take
variability out at some point, that’s good. Automation doesn’t
make good beer . . . people make good beer. Automation can
help people make more good beer, on a more repeatable basis”
Chilling results
More efficient temperature controls do not just result in fewer
man-hours spent checking fermentation tanks and more
consistent beer quality. The constant glycol flow adjustment
allowed by the Braumat Compact takes stress off Yazoo’s glycol
chiller.
“We noticed before we added the system that we’d have a hard
time getting the tanks down to the temperature we wanted,”
Hall said. “We were chilling them by just manually opening the
valves wide-open on three tanks. The glycol would run through
the one tank first, which would cool the tank, but it would also
warm up the glycol, and the other two tanks would suffer.”
The chiller would also suffer, running flat-out to recover from
constant peak demands. It looked like Yazoo needed a bigger
chiller.

It turned out that the size of the chiller was not the problem, it
was the spikes and drops in demand. “With the Siemens system,
we can control the rate that the tank chills down,” Hall
explained. “We set it to drop at maybe one degree per hour. It
completely changed the demands on the chiller. I had anticipated
we’d have to invest in a chiller, maybe $20,000, but it ran a lot
better last year. So the Braumat Compact saved us from buying a
new chiller.”
The Braumat Compact adapts and calculates how rapidly a
certain-sized batch of beer will cool in each tank (as it similarly
saves data on how fast a given volume and weight of mash will
heat in the brewhouse) and adjusts glycol flow to optimize the
temperature change over time. Brewers can also adjust the on/
off range around set-points to cut down on excess cycling. Valveactuating
solenoids might be cheap, but getting them out and
replacing them often is not.
Running the chiller is not free, either: Power costs money, and
utility companies are starting to charge stiff premiums for heavy
usage during times of peak power demand, a trend that is bound
to broaden and increase. Yazoo is lucky; it buys its electricity
from the Tennessee Valley Authority at rates substantially lower
than the national average. Still, Hall can save money with the
Braumat Compact’s ability to easily set maximum energy usage,
like building the ice bank, for off-peak hours.
“It levels out your electric demand,” he said. “It’s not so bad here
in Tennessee, but where I used to work, we had to stagger all
our demands. Now, we can actually schedule the cooling of the
tanks to happen at night. It’s a better environment for it, better
than trying to do it in the heat of a Nashville summer day.”

Change for the better
The Braumat Compact has had a solid impact on Yazoo Brewing’s
bottom line. “It put off the investment in a new chiller,” Hall said.
“We were also able to hold off adding another assistant brewer;
that’s probably $35,000 - $40,000 a year.”
“What it’s really saved us is time,” he emphasized, “and with our
growth, we’ve been able to better use those hours in other areas.
We’ve been able to improve our cleaning regimen, for example,
and we’re in a competitive market: consistency keeps your sales
up. When you’re growing quickly, any time saving freed up for
extra work produces more beer.”
“It’s really improved the quality and the consistency of our
beers,” Hall continued. “The more finicky yeast strains are more
dependent on the temperature, and we’ve been able to get more
consistency with that. Once you figure out the best way to do it,
it gets done every time, no matter who’s brewing. I’m hoping we
can double or even quadruple production with the same
manpower.”
Alarming problems
This is all wonderful stuff when everything is working. The
Braumat Compact sits in its box, reaching out through data
networks to operate valves, pumps, and switches, while
recording all the data on how processes proceed, so brewers
can monitor and evaluate the different brews.
When something goes wrong, how does the system cope Some
things are handled easily, just because of the Braumat panel
putting all the readouts in one, conveniently-viewed place.
“There have been cases where a valve was stuck open,” Hall
recalled, “but you walk by and see that flashing, and you go
fix it.”
It does not even have to be a brewer. “I ask our tasting room
employees to run back and look at the system on Saturdays,” Hall
said. “It’s easy to know if something’s wrong, you can see the
error lights flashing. And one weekend, a fuse had blown on the
glycol compressor, but the circulating pump was still running.
Instead of chilling, it was warming the beer! It would have ruined
17 tanks of beer, but he called me and I came in and re-set the
chiller, and everything was great.” The system saved Yazoo about
$67,000 worth of beer that day.
There are some more intangible benefits, too. “It’s really helped
in communicating what’s going on,” Hall noted. “Anyone in the
brewery can walk by and see how each brew is doing. Before, we
had to communicate between shifts what was going on. Having
the Braumat Compact also boosted everyone’s perception of
what we are as a brewery. Before it was like we were just a
bunch of homebrewers, cranking out 10 bbls. of beer. Now
we’re thinking, hey, we are professional brewers, working on
professional systems. It raised everyone’s standards.”
As Yazoo grows, Braumat Compact will grow with it, offering
new savings with every additional process it controls or increase
in capacity. The system offers the benefits of a large brewery’s
automation infrastructure at a price and ROI that suits a smaller
brewery. It pays for itself in improved production efficiency and
increased throughput. Best of all, it lets the brewer keep control
of the quality and consistency of the only thing that matters:
the beer.
If the valve sticks, or the fuse blows at 2 a.m. on Sunday morning
that could be more of a problem, but the Braumat is on the job,
24/7. The system is capable of e-mail or text message alerts.
“We’re going to get in some e-mail alerting ability,” Hall said.
Depending on the problem, someone may not even have to go in
to fix it. Real-time remote monitoring can be done on a home
computer, and anything that can be done from the control
interface screen at the brewery, can be done remotely –
all with appropriate security layers, of course.

Getting up and running
Getting the system installed and functioning was easier than
Linus Hall had imagined. Once the decision to implement the
system was made, John Walker told Linus about the Siemens’
network of Solution Partners that specialize in the configuration,
implementation, and installation of process systems. These
Solution Partners are systems integrators grouped by industry
expertise. Using a company with brewing and Braumat Compact
expertise can drastically reduce the cost and risks associated
with implementation of specialized systems. Linus decided to
partner with Prism Systems from Mobile, Alabama. Prism is a
long-time Siemens partner and is one of a select group of
Braumat Compact systems integrators in the U.S.
Prism worked with Siemens and Yazoo to determine the specific
needs of the brewery and tailored a solution to meet Yazoo’s
needs without breaking their budget. Keith Jones with Prism
said, “It is important, when implementing a system like this, to
make sure that you listen to the wants and needs of the
customer. These systems can have a huge impact in a brewery
where there may have been little automation in the past. For big
changes like this, we need to make sure we get it right the first
time. It is very rewarding to play an integral part in helping
another business flourish.”
For Yazoo, the immediate desire was to gain better control of the
fermentation area. Prism developed the fermentation block for
Yazoo that Braumat uses to control the temperature profiles for
the fermentation tanks. Once this block was written, it was then
incorporated into the system and became a tool that any user of
Braumat Compact can utilize. For implementing the system,
Prism and Siemens worked with Linus to customize the
functionality for the Yazoo. Prism then implemented the
software.
There is still a little more to adding a control system than just
buying the controller and programming it. For instance, to
control a fermentation tank, sensors are needed to read the
temperature, and automated valves are required to send chilled
water to the jacket of the fermentation tank. These devices must
be wired back to the location where the I/O modules reside.
Prism helped Yazoo decide which sensors were needed and then
took responsibility for wiring the system.
Once up and running, support and training are easy to
accomplish. The Braumat Compact system is running Windows
XP. Using standard software, Prism can connect to the computer
when issues or questions arise. Yazoo has 24-hour access to a
system expert!

Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.
Industry Sector
3333 Old Milton Parkway
Alpharetta, GA 30005
1-800-964-4114
info.sea@siemens.com
www.sea.siemens.com/process
Subject to change without prior notice
Order No.: PAFL-00120-0409
All rights reserved
Printed in USA
©2009 Siemens Energy & Automation, Inc.
The information provided in this brochure contains merely
general descriptions or characteristics of performance
which in case of actual use do not always apply as described
or which may change as a result of further development
of the products. An obligation to provide the respective
characteristics shall only exist if expressly agreed in the
terms of contract.
All product designations may be trademarks or product
names of Siemens AG or supplier companies whose use by
third parties for their own purposes could violate the rights
of the owners.